[mythtv-users] will Nova-T 500 work?

Nick Morrott knowledgejunkie at gmail.com
Mon Apr 23 21:53:50 UTC 2007


On 23/04/07, Frank Mckinney <krush_groove83 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all, soon-to-be new user here...
>
> I'm building up a system and in an enthusiastic impulse eBaying spree I
> purchased a Nova-T 500 tuner card without doing a lot of research if it will
> work or not. In doing much reading after I got the card I've found out the
> 500 is from an older generation of cards, and the preferred Hauppage card
> seems to be the PVR 350 or 150. So basically I'm just checking of the Nova-T
> 500 will be okay, relatively easy to set up, etc.?

The Nova-T 500 is actually a very new card from Hauppauge - their
first dual *DVB* tuner. The PVR-150 is probably the preferred hardware
MPEG-2 card for *analogue* recordings, although you could use a
cheaper framegrabber card.

There have been many recent threads on this and the linux-dvb lists
about problems using the Nova-T 500 which have hopefully been ironed
out now (USB disconnects) - you need to ensure you use the very latest
kernel for your chosen distro, and follow (and read the archives of)
these two lists closely. I'm not certain if all the problems have been
fixed - perhaps a Nova-T 500 user could chime in here :)

> I haven't even started building up the system yet but this is what I'm
> planning for phase one of the MythTV box:
> AMD Sempron 2600+
> Hauppage Nova-T 500 ??
> 384mb of RAM (PC133)
> 250w P/S
> Ubuntu Linux

Seems like a suitable spec for a UK-based standard definition system.
Recording from DVB requires very little CPU, and standard def playback
not much either. Transcoding video and/or using software encoding are
probably the largest CPU killers for UK-based MythTV systems. You
should be fine with 384MB RAM - I ran a machine with only 256MB and
didn't have problems, but you'll also see 512MB quoted for good
performance, especially if it's also going to be a general purpose
box.

> Not truly impressive specs but everything apart from the CPU and tuner card
> was free (yay Freecycle!). I'm hoping to make the MythTV box a backend and
> use an Xbox system as a frontend. Which brings to mind my next question for
> another post...
>
> Anyway, I'd really appreciate if anyone can point me to a guide,
> walkthrough, etc., about using the Nova-T 500, or just tell me simple 'yes,
> it will work' :)

I can't provide a specific guide, but the card should be set up like
any other DVB card in Linux (use correct drivers etc), only you
configure it twice in MythTV because it's a dual tuner.

> If it matters, I'm in the UK and planning to connect everything to either a
> Freeview aerial (one reason for the Nova-T 500) and/or a Sky digibox...

Either way is possible - DVB is easiest because you don't need another
capture card (you'd need an analogue card such as a PVR-150 to record
from Sky) and you can also get your listings over the air using the
EIT program listings. Configuring analogue channels with a different
listings grabber can be more involved for hte newcomer, so I would
suggest getting your DVB-based system up and running, and then you can
add further cards for your Sky box if you want to.

Don't forget to bookmark the wiki and list archives at Gossamer
-they're essential sources of information, and there's also a
#mythtv-users IRC channel on freenode.

Nick
-- 
MythTV Official wiki:
http://mythtv.org/wiki/
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